City di­gest

Waikato DHB boss Nigel Mur­ray has quit, and the health board could be with­out a chief ex­ec­u­tive for up to 18 months as it looks to fill the top job. Mur­ray’s res­ig­na­tion was an­nounced at a closed-door board meet­ing and fol­lows a two-and-a-half-month in­ves­ti­ga­tion into al­le­ga­tions of unau­tho­rised spend­ing. In­ves­ti­ga­tors found Mur­ray had filed other unau­tho­rised ex­pense claims un­der­stood to re­late to travel and ac­com­mo­da­tion.

APP SUCKS UP CASH

Waikato Dis­trict Health Board mem­bers al­legedly gave the goa­head to a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar vir­tual health ini­tia­tive based on in­com­plete pa­per­work. Since its launch in 2016, 8760 peo­ple have reg­is­tered with the DHB’s vir­tual health app, dubbed SmartHealth. Ex­ec­u­tives have re­peat­edly re­fused to dis­close the cost of the app plat­form- es­ti­mated to be $8 mil­lion.

CRE­MA­TO­RIUM IS­SUES

Cre­ma­tors in Hamil­ton may have to run for 10-hour stretches to keep up with ris­ing de­mand. Around 1700 cre­ma­tions were com­pleted at Hamil­ton Park Ceme­tery in the 2016/17 fi­nan­cial year - 150 fewer than the max­i­mum pos­si­ble.